


in safe hands

by manycoloureddays



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Leverage Fusion, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25143739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manycoloureddays/pseuds/manycoloureddays
Summary: “You need to be more careful.”Mike emphasises his point with a sharp tug at the end of the bandage he’s securing around her knuckles. She doesn’t make a sound. She refuses to give him the satisfaction. She keeps glaring down at their hands.
Relationships: Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair/Mike Wheeler
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13





	in safe hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dgalerab](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dgalerab/gifts).



> for ain, because birthdays mean fic, and also because every word they write is a gift to the world so it's only fair that's returned. thank you for madwheelclair (who are also a gift to the world), have a great day!

“You need to be more careful.” 

Mike emphasises his point with a sharp tug at the end of the bandage he’s securing around her knuckles. She doesn’t make a sound. She refuses to give him the satisfaction. She keeps glaring down at their hands. 

“You shouldn’t have kept fighting.”

His voice is tight and his face is guarded in that way Max used to think he had to be practicing in the mirror. She’d thought that right up until the day she met Nancy Wheeler in the flesh and realised it was just another thing Mike had inherited, a useful tool he’d brought with him from his strange Stepford childhood, so different from the crash pad, back of van, new city every other week life they live now. 

He tugs on the bandage again, ducks his head down so they’re as close to eye level as they can get with her perched on a stool and him standing. She can actually see him letting her in, watches as he drops some of his defences. The fear of today bleeding out across his face.

“Max –” God, his voice is too gentle.

She yanks her hand out of his grip, tucking it against her chest. “More careful, yep, I got it, Wheeler. Jeez.” 

His eyes shutter, everything going out of his expression. All the pain and worry locked away again.

She rankles at that, even though it’s her fault. She can’t be mad at him for holding her at a distance when she’s pushed him away. She closes her eyes and breathes in deep, centring herself, settling into her body.  _ What would Lucas do?  _ And the answer comes so easily it’s like he’s standing right next to her.  _ Reassure him. Reach out to him. He just wants you to be okay _ . She wishes he really was standing right next to her. 

“It’s just some bruised knuckles,” she says, not quite soft, but getting there. In the right direction maybe. “I’m fine.” 

He nods. His face is still cold. 

She reaches out with her uninjured hand. Grips his neck and pulls him in close, until their foreheads are pressed together and he’s going cross eyed trying to maintain eye contact. 

“I’m  _ fine _ , Mike.”

He breathes in shakily. Presses closer into her touch. She forgets sometimes, that even though he’s their man in the van he craves contact more than either of them. Or maybe it’s because he spends so much of his time hooked into a network, somewhere cold and alone, that he needs it more, the reassurance of human touch. 

Before Hopper pulled her out of her version of the family business, let her turn her skillset towards something good and honest, before Lucas, before Mike, she had generally found human touch to be violent, something to defend against. But that was years ago now, so she can do this for him. 

She squeezes the back of his neck. 

“We’re fine, and we’re going to get him back.”

__

  
  


It’s a routine lift. He’s just swiping a lanyard, the ID card isn’t even anything with high level security clearance. Plus it’s some fancy gallery opening. The room is full of people with champagne flutes in hand, relaxed and not at all interested in remembering the faces of the wait staff. The lowest of risks.

It’s a routine lift during a routine con, which is almost definitely how they get the drop on him. 

Lucas doesn’t like to brag, but he’s really good at reading a room, taking stock of everyone in it, knowing exactly how soft to make his footsteps, how much pressure to use when he slips his hand into someone’s pocket, how to make himself invisible after he’s got what he came for. And, okay,  he can practically hear Mike and Max laughing at him just thinking that, so maybe he does like to brag, sue him, he’s got a lot to brag about. Point is, he got complacent, he got distracted, and now there’s a gun pressed to the small of his back and he’s watching Max’s face go red with anger from where she’s watching up on the mezzanine balcony. 

“Lucas,” she breathes harsh, right into his ear through their comms. “Do not do anything stupid.”

_ “What? What’s going on?”  _ Mike’s voice is distant, distracted. Lucas hears the clatter of fingers across a keyboard, and then, “ _ shit, Lucas _ ”. He’s checked back in with the security feed then.

“If you wouldn’t mind following me to my car, Mr Sinclair,” the woman who has just emptied his tray of the last caramelised onion tart says, smiling politely and looking for all the world as though she’s asking an innocuous question about the food in her hand. 

Lucas smiles back, although it sits uneasily on his face, still watching Max out of the corner of his eye. She is shoving through the crowd, talking rapid fire under her breath to Mike. She’ll never get to him in time. Whoever this woman is, she’s good. She and the person digging the gun into his spine. They’ve got him right near the kitchen door. 

He takes a deep breath.  _ Focus _ .

He runs through his options, every data point he has in front of him. They haven’t shot him yet. Which means they want him for something. And he knows how to deal with people who want things from him. So, shooting an apologetic look at Max who growls “don’t you fucking  _ dare _ ”, he nods. 

“Lead the way.”

Once they’re through the service door and into the alley out the back, they yank the comm from his ear and a bag goes over his head, and all he can do is count turns and hope for the best. 

__

  
  


“What do you mean,  _ they _ have Lucas? Who the hell are  _ they _ ?” Erica glares at him through the screen of his laptop and Mike wants to shrink back in his chair. He doesn’t, because that would be giving her exactly what she wants, but the instinct is definitely still there.

Erica has always had a way of making Mike want to cower, just a little. Even when he was well on his way to six foot and she had yet to reach five, she would look at him like he was less than an idiot. Nine times out of ten, he’d dart behind Lucas and she’d snicker. He understands being a younger sibling, pushing buttons only you know exist, but he never really understood the way Lucas and Erica were with each other. 

They weren’t like Mike and Nancy, too similar to see eye to eye as kids, or Mike and Holly for that matter. Holly was so different from the rest of them she had actually managed to stay on the right side of the law.

Erica and Lucas were loud all the time, bickering and poking, blowing up at each other over slights so small Mike had barely registered their existence, but they still somehow managed to talk. Somewhere, in the midst of insults hurled from other rooms and glares exchanged over their mother’s shoulder, the Sinclair siblings learned how to communicate with one another, and now, years later, there was a standing weekly phone call that Mike always managed to be out of the apartment for. 

“Michael Wheeler, so help me.” Erica looks like she’s building up to yell again. 

Mike sighs. “If I knew who they were, do you think I’d be wasting time talking to you? Do you think I wouldn’t be with Max, getting him back. We don’t  _ know, _ Erica. We don’t know who they are, we don’t know where they took him, they fucked with the traffic cameras in the area as well as the CCTV at the gallery, we didn’t get a look at the plates on whatever vehicle they got him in, the goons Max managed to get her hands on were no help at all, we don’t know if he’s okay, we don’t.” He heaves in a breath, but it doesn’t do any good. It feels like he’s swallowing a big lungful of nothing. “We don’t know. I don’t. I don’t know.”

“Okay, okay.” Erica scrunches up her nose like she’s smelled something rotten. She does something weird with her voice. She sounds like Mike remembers Mrs Sinclair had at early sleepovers, when Karen was off taking money and art from people in other cities, and Mike wasn’t quite able to get himself to sleep. “Mike, breathe. Breathe. Jesus, you’re paler than usual. You look like you’re about to pass out. Breathe.” 

_ Oh _ , he thinks,  _ she’s trying to be comforting _ . That shocks a laugh out of him. It’s probably not what she was going for, but effective in the end. 

She rolls her eyes. “Now we’ve got that out of the way.” Her eyes shift away from him, and he can tell she’s booting up her own systems. 

He considers himself a better hacker than Erica. He doesn’t feel bad about that because she considers herself a better hacker than him. He’s quiet and focused on leaving no trace, while she barges in and burns networks to the ground once she’s done with them. But he’s only one person. Having two more eyes looking for Lucas, having someone else who loves him sifting through all the data, he can already feel the pressure that’s been sitting heavy on his chest lifting. Getting Lucas back is worth this conversation. 

“I’ll see what I can find. Feed any information back to you.”

Mike goes to sign off, but Erica glaces back at the camera, just for a second. She doesn’t need to say it. 

“We’ll bring him home,” he says, softly.

“You better.” Her camera goes dark. 

  
  


___

  
  


It doesn’t take much for Lucas to convince the woman - Connie, according to Goon #2, who drove worse than Max and managed to look both annoyed and sheepish when he was dressed down for dropping the name - that he wasn’t going to be a flight risk. 

“I’m a thief,” he shrugs, easy as anything, zip ties already undone behind him. Not that they knew that. “Cut me in and I won’t even ask questions.”

She raises her eyebrows, but he is almost positive they are looking at a multi million dollar haul, so when he low-balls his asking price, only demands 250, she relaxes minutely.  _ All those hours studying microexpressions did come in handy, _ he thinks vindictively in Dustin’s direction. It’s not all the clinical safe distance of life behind a screen or the battering ram of devastation in a Max style smash and grab, some jobs require nuance. A light touch. A thief’s touch.

But winning Connie over doesn’t make the job easy. He still has to get into the museum, past a security system he doesn’t have the time or the hacker to understand. He’ll be going in blind. 

It’s been years since he worked alone. And even back then, he was rarely doing jobs like this, impulsive and unprepared.  _ Rarely, but not never _ , he reminds himself. He likes an adrenaline rush as much as the next thief after all. It’s why so many of the good ones stay in the business after they’ve set themselves up for life. But even back then he’d nabbed blueprints and floor plans, called Mike or Erica to get a look at the security feed. 

He misses having a voice in his ear. Pre-con planning should always come with a side order of bickering. 

They’re the reason he’s doing this alone though. The photos of Max and Mike - long lens camera, angles suggesting a sniper. He can hear Hopper’s growl,  _ it’s a very distinctive angle _ . Connie left them half poking out of a folder on the table. He’d felt her eyes on him when he’d caught sight of them, assessing his reaction. 

Once he’s inside, once he has his hands on the art she so desperately wants, he’s looking forward to watching her realise she has no idea who she’s chosen to try and blackmail. 

He’s going to double cross her. That much should be obvious, and if she doesn’t have at least three contingency plans she’s not half as good as she thinks she is. But it isn’t him she has to worry about. Because the two people he trusts most in the world are not afraid of sniper rifles, no matter how much he wishes they were. 

  
  


__

  
  


“He’s late,” Max sighs, checking her watch again. She’s got her hands on her hips and feels five minutes away from tapping her foot, which reminds her so strongly of her mother that she drops the impatience immediately. 

Mike’s shoulders are up around his ears, and she doubts it’s just the cold, although it’s freezing up on the museum roof at night. “He’s fine.” 

“Say that again, but aim for convincing,” she snarks.

He rolls his eyes, but he smiles at her. She thinks they might both be grateful for the suggestion of even ground.

“He is late though.”

Mike huffs a laugh. “Late by whose count? They dropped him off by the back entrance half an hour ago. We don’t know what his plan is, but if he’s going anywhere near anything worth taking - and there is loads worth taking in there, this museum’s on my list of potential future targets - it’ll take him  _ at least _ half an hour to get up here.”

Max knows that’s true, but she doesn’t have to like it. 

“Max,” Mike’s hand cups her elbow. He doesn’t pull, doesn’t even really grip, just suggests that she turn around to face him, so she does. “You saw his face when he got out of that car, you saw his body language. He has a plan.”

She nods. A Lucas with a plan is a Lucas who’s coming back to her. Back to them. Which is good, because he promised her he always would, way back when they decided they’d take Hopper’s crusade and run with it. The day Lucas doesn’t come back. Suffice it to say, the world will wish it had never heard the names Mayfield and Wheeler. 

There’s a subtle shift in the rooftop atmosphere that makes the back of her neck itch, followed by a soft throat clearing noise. She drops her guard and spins around. 

“Did you miss me?” Lucas asks, grin a little bashful as if he’s not the best thing they’ve seen in thirty nine hours. 

Max is across the roof in an instant, Mike not far behind her. She tucks herself into Lucas’s body, under his chin, and squeezes until he sighs at her. She looks up, smirking.  _ That’s what you get for walking through those doors without me _ . He presses a soft kiss to her forehead, then to the tip of her nose,  _ I know, I’m sorry _ . 

Mike whines soft in the back of his throat, and they both look up to where he’s wrapped himself around Lucas like a gangly, overprotective backpack. Lucas grins up at him, and twists in their arms until he can pull Mike in for a proper kiss. 

She would be happy to stand like this for hours, arms wound around Lucas while he sticks his tongue down Mike’s throat in an attempt to reassure him, but her relief at seeing Lucas has settled, and she’s aware all over again of just how exposed they are in the middle of the roof. 

“Come on,” she says, tugging at them both. “Let’s go home.”

  
  


__

  
  


Mike wakes up too hot under a tangle of limbs. For a moment he’s sure he never woke up the morning after Lucas was taken. He and Max are asleep on the couch because neither of them wants to face the bed without him, and that’s why his neck is killing him. 

Adrenaline floods his system, his heart racing before he can even open his eyes. 

A hand pushes down on his chest, too big to be Max’s. He blinks his eyes open, glances down to see Lucas pressing him into the couch, hand tightening its grip on Mike’s t-shirt in his sleep. 

It all comes flooding back. They had fallen asleep on the couch again, although it can’t have been for more than an hour judging by the light coming in through the window. He wriggles, thinking of the half a dozen slices of pizza left in the kitchen.

Lucas groans and Max sticks a bony elbow into his guts when he tries to shift them though, so he snuggles back in, let’s his eyes drift shut, and falls back asleep. Pizza, a physio appointment for his neck, that can all wait until tomorrow. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr @ manycoloureddays and on twitter @bvrlybrks


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